What does Joomla 3.0 Alpha-1 look like?

As Joomla 3.0 Alpha-1 was just released, we have installed it to check it out. The Joomla team informed us that there were no changes to the front end or the back end, and that the only changes were to the Joomla platform itself. It's not that we didn't believe the team, but we wanted to see for ourselves if there were any changes to the look and feel of Joomla 3.0 in the Alpha-1 version.

What does the Joomla 3.0 Alpha-1 frontend look like?

Just as we should have expected, the frontend of Joomla 3.0 looks just like the frontend of Joomla 2.5.

What does the Joomla 3.0 Alpha-1 administration section look like?

After logging into /administrator for Joomla 3.0 Alpha-1, again we noticed that it looks just like the admin dashboard for Joomla 2.5.

We did notice that over the years, the ID number of the initial admin user has changed. In this version, our Super User has an ID of 298:

Version

Admin ID

Joomla 1.5

62

Joomla 2.5

42

Joomla 3.0

298

We did notice something else too. While we don't feel like it is even worth mentioning because it is insignificant, we will anyways. In Joomla 2.5, on the Control Panel page the icons are listed under a heading of Quick Icons, which is collapsible. In Joomla 3.0, they are not.

You can also tell from the screenshots that some of the icons are missing, such as User Mangager and Edit Profile.

Again, we are not expecting any changes at all in this version of Joomla 3.0. We *may* begin to see changes however in late July 2012, when Joomla 3.0 Alpha-2 is planned for release.